The career path less traveled
Chance opening turned into long run for T.F. United’s Lagunas
When Alejandro Lagunas arrived at T.F. North in 2002, he planned to be on the sidelines during soccer games. He just didn’t think he’d be coaching.
“I came to T.F. North to take a position as a teacher and a certified athletic trainer,” Lagunas said. “The boys coach had just resigned and they knew I had played soccer in college (at Millikin) and had done some coaching, so they offered me the job.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all, but I took the boys job in the fall, was an athletic trainer in the winter, and then coached the girls in the spring.”
The following year, T.F. North’s program morphed into T.F. United, a co-op with T.F. South. Lagunas, 43, has coached the United boys program for its entire existence.
This season, T.F. United co-op won its first outright South Suburban Blue title, going 10-0-1 in conference play and 12-4-3 overall.
Lagunas, the Daily Southtown 2018 Boys Soccer Coach of the Year, didn’t see it coming.
“There have been teams in the past where you think we’ve got this strong group coming back and it should be a good year, and it doesn’t usually work out that way,” Lagunas said. “This wasn’t one of those years where we had high expectations.”
Lagunas, a Blue Island native and Thornton graduate, said this team was unique among all he’s coached, and not due to its high skill level.
“This wasn’t the most talented group we’ve had,” he said. “We had a lot of leaders on the team, though. There were starters who were leaders and there were kids on the bench who barely played whowere leaders.
“These guys did everything we asked them to do and they bought in. They believed in it.”
That belief remained even after a slow start in nonconference play.
“We started 1-3-2,” Lagunas said. “We had a shootout loss, we tied good teams like Bloom and (Homewood-Flossmoor), but we were wondering when we were going to get over that hump.
“Thornton (co-op) whooped our butts 6-2 (on Aug. 27) and then we never lost again in the regular season.”
In its conference opener, T.F. United fell behind 2-0 against Tinley Park— which won just two league games — but rallied for a 4-2 win.
“We didn’t really know what we had at that point, but then a few games later we kind of took it to Lemont, beat them 6-1,” Lagunas said. “Lemont is a great program, so thatwas an eye-opener.
“We knew we had a shot then and we just had to take it game by game.”
Junior defender Kyle Downar-Clark said the team’s chemistry carried it through a 13-game unbeaten streak.
“We never really expected to have this much success,” he said. “We all get along so well and we have a great bond as a team. Our coaches are a big part of that, too.”
After sealing the conference title with a 1-0 win over Oak Forest on Oct. 9, T.F. United went on to earn a big victory over Stagg in its Class 3A playoff opener before falling to Lincoln-Way East in a regional final.
“I give all the credit for our success to our kids for buying in,” Lagunas said. “It was an exciting year andwe had a lot of fun.”